New: President Trump& #39;s resistance to intel warnings about Russia led his national security team to verbally brief him less often on Russia-related threats to the US

(Reporting adapted from my upcoming book “The Madman Theory: Trump Takes on the World”) https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/politics/trump-intel-briefings-russia/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/0...

“According to one former senior intelligence official, the President& #39;s briefers had one simple rule with Trump: never lead with Russia.”

“It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where he hears less and less of what he doesn& #39;t want to hear and therefore starts to believe more and more that the Russians aren& #39;t doing anything bad," a former senior NSC official said.

“Trump& #39;s briefers discovered that when his oral briefing included intelligence related to Russia& #39;s malign activities against the United States...Trump would often blow up at them, demanding to know why they kept focusing on Russia and often questioning the intelligence itself”